[Techtalk] periodic loud hard drive noise--solved

[Anne Wainwright]

Instant karma!

Needing an extra computer at business to cope with seasonal one-month
rush in Feb I dragged out trusty pentium 200-MMX from the undertable
museum to find the hd clapped and making noises. It was alright last
time I used it playing with slackware. Now formatting with win2000 and
hoping it will last for Feb. If that doesn't go I'll try R.I.P o/w off
to the computer graveyard :(

happy Sunday all.
Anne

On Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:39:27 -0800
Carla Schroder <carla at bratgrrl.com> wrote:

> OK, I know I've nattered on way too long about this, violating my own
> rule of 'one test is better than a thousand theories.' 
> 
> The noisy drive is the old 20GB IDE drive; I couldn't shut down the
> PC and disconnect the disk until today. smartctl is supported on this
> disk, though not fully, and the only error it reported was
> 
> Power_On_Seconds  FAILING_NOW 40531h+24m+05s
> 
> That doesn't mean the drive is failing, it means it has exceeded the
> value set by the manufacturer for the expected lifetime of the disk.
> Grinding noises are bad no matter what smartctl reports, so it now
> resides in the stuff-to-shoot bucket.
> 
> It was good for getting useful suggestions, thanks everyone!
> 
> Carla
>